Exploring Space

Undergraduates at Case Western Reserve will work on high-tech projects motivated by NASA and the aerospace industry, thanks to a new partnership with the space agency and Massachusetts-based software-maker PTC.

The university is the nation’s second higher education institution to participate in NASA’s SPACE, the Strategic Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering, program. Its chief goal is to train new generations of engineers and scientists by giving students the opportunity to work on real-world challenges in aeronautics and other fields.

As part of the initiative, PTC donated its Windchill® software for Product Lifecycle Management requirements and PTC Creo® software for Computer Assisted Design, along with hardware servers. These enable students to collaborate on the design, testing and simulation of new products.

The undergraduates will work on aerospace-related projects, such as designing cost-effective human missions to explore asteroids and satellites that measure orbital decay, as well as projects that are connected to manufacturing in aerospace and other products.

“Students who get involved with meaningful projects and these kinds of software tools earlier in their education are the people who will create, manufacture and get to market the next generation of products,” says Michael Grieves (MGT ’00), Product Lifecycle Management pioneer and independent consultant to NASA, who helped arrange PTC’s donation and creation of the SPACE program at Case Western Reserve.